The Pentagon announced Monday that it will move journalists from their dedicated workspace inside its iconic building and require them to work from a separate facility, days after a federal judge ruled that the Defense Department’s controversial media policy violated the press freedom and due process rights of the New York Times and one of its reporters.
In a statement posted on X on Monday evening, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote that the department will comply with the Friday ruling from Senior U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, but disagrees with it and will appeal.
Parnell also said that the Defense Department cannot adequately manage security within its five-sided building with working press inside. He announced that it has closed the “Correspondents’ Corridor” where journalists have worked for decades and will move them to an “annex facility outside the Pentagon, but still on Pentagon grounds.”
The new facility “will be available when ready,” he said, without specifying when that will be.
The Defense Department did not immediately respond to a question about where the Pentagon press corps would work before the new annex is ready. Friday’s ruling ordered that the Pentagon reinstate Times reporters.
Parnell also said that journalists will now require an escort by authorized Pentagon staffers to enter the building outside of scheduled press briefings and interviews.
“The Department remains committed to transparency and to working with credentialed journalists who cover the Department and the U.S. military,” Parnell wrote. “The Department is equally committed to the security of the Pentagon and the protection of the men and women who work there.”
Friday’s ruling came in a case filed by the Times and one of its reporters after the Pentagon introduced a new press policy in October. It asked journalists to agree that the Defense Department could revoke press credentials for anyone soliciting information not authorized for release — even if it was unclassified.
Journalists from dozens of news organizations, including the Times and The Washington Post, refused to sign the new policy and turned in their credentials. A group of largely right-wing media signed up for credentials under the now-defunct rules.
In a statement late Monday, the Pentagon Press Association wrote that Parnell’s announcement is a “clear violation of the letter and spirit” of the judge’s ruling.
“Judge Paul Friedman specifically ruled that the department was to restore access ‘especially in light of the country’s recent incursion into Venezuela and its ongoing war with Iran,’” the group wrote. “At such a critical time, we ask why the Pentagon is choosing to restrict vital press freedoms that help inform all Americans.”
The Times also said that the move violates the judge’s order. “The new policy does not comply with the judge’s order. It continues to impose unconstitutional restrictions on the press,” spokesman Charlie Stadtlander wrote in a statement. “We will be going back to court.”
Military and defense journalists pushed back on Parnell’s claim that their displacement was necessary for security.
“The court did not remove DoD’s ability to screen for security risks,” James LaPorta, CBS News’s national security coordinating producer, wrote on X. A journalist threatening someone at the Pentagon would be reason to deny a press credential, he added. Simply attempting to obtain information would be as the judge ruled last week, he said, “what journalists do.”
Meghann Myers, a staff reporter at Defense One, said security wasn’t the reason behind the policy change. “Reporters always passed background checks” to get their Pentagon press credentials, she wrote on X. “The only thing this administration did is attempt to punish reporters who sought information beyond public affairs offices.”
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